Keeping the Colour in Colourmusic

Colourmusic, from Stillwater, Oklahoma, is said to be Wayne Coyne’s favorite new band. Coyne is the frontman for the Flaming Lips, is also from Oklahoma, and is often seen crowd-surfing arenas during concerts from within the safekeeping of an inflated plastic bubble. This may explain his appreciation for a band that outguns his own in theatrical buffoonery during a performance. For example, Colourmusic have had their hair and clothes cut off by audience members. They have worn dresses. They have exercised on stage. They go through many odd costume changes at a gig, claim to take inspiration from Isaac Newton’s theories on the relationship between color and sound, and at least one of their videos shows the band hacking stuffed animals to bits. So, what do they sound like? Cosmic, with a beat. Some members of the rock press have pegged them as psych-folk or psych-rock, but the band says, “Oklahoma sex rock.”

Colourmusic got going in 1998 as a campus collaboration between Ryan Hendrix and an exchange student from the U.K. named Nick Turner. They were attending Oklahoma State University and remained in contact post grad. In time, Turner became a permanent resident of the U.S. The two drafted a couple of new members, and Colourmusic became an official band.

Their sound has a frenzied, worried quality, pleasant enough on the exterior but with hints of darkness. Colourmusic is echoey and eccentric and sounds to me like Zeppelin played through giant speakers on a rust-bucket carnival ride spinning madly through the universe. Not every piece of music needs to have a beginning, middle, and end. There’s a place for that in rock and roll, but there’s also room for Colourmusic. And nonsense.